7 tips for your successful desk sharing project

May 19, 2023

May 19, 2023

May 19, 2023

94% of organizations are allowing employees more flexibility as to where and when they work while implementing a flexible office concept with Shared Desks. However, many desk sharing projects end up in intransparent office attendance, poorly managed office utilization, and worsening team communication and productivity.

Having supported hundreds of companies on their NewWork journey, the Yoffix team has distilled these golden rules for achieving 100% success in your hybrid project. By implementing these 7 actionable tips you can optimize your office use and costs while enhancing collaboration and teamwork. 

1. Set clear goals and rules

Desk Sharing is merely an instrument. Before its implementation, it is crucial to engage in discussions to determine your objectives and establish clear goals for your hybrid work concept.

Here are some ideas that you might want to consider:

  • Space optimization goals

  • Proportion of shared and fixed desks now and in the future

  • Open policy vs. requirements on a minimal number of office days per week

  • Separate hybrid plans for different departments/teams

  • Expectations on joint team office days

  • Desk booking rules - e.g. how many weeks in advance desks can be booked.

2. Create meaningful office days

One crucial consideration is addressing the question "Why come to the office?" even after agreeing on the number of days employees should be present. The office's role is changing, and it's crucial to provide compelling reasons for employees to return. Fraunhofer Research reveals that over 80% of employees view meeting colleagues, socializing, and collaborating as the primary motivation for office attendance.

The following features will assist you in creating meaningful office days for your colleagues:

  • Easily check planned office days of your teammates and align your schedule 

  • Schedule team office days with an integrated desk booking feature (check here why it is important)

  • Find your favorite colleague's reservation on the floor plan and book a desk next to them

  • Also make bookable other office assets (e.g. meeting rooms, telephone booths, equipment, etc.) to enable a productive office environment for your colleagues.


3. Adjust desk sharing to your needs 

As you implement your Shared Desk project, expect diverse workplace needs among departments and employees. Some may prefer to keep their desk in the office for better working conditions, while you might consider department separation or distinct zones to accommodate different types of tasks (e.g., quiet zones vs. collaboration zones). 

These features can assist you in achieving the following:

  • Personalize some workspaces by assigning desks to individual employees. You can reevaluate this arrangement based on actual usage data after a few months based on real use data.

  • Allocate desks or rooms to specific departments, creating designated zones in the office and ensuring a minimum workplace capacity for each department.


4. Aim for maximizing desk utilization

Each workplace in the office is a valuable and costly resource. It is crucial to ensure its effective utilization.

These features would help you:

  • Option to book desks by hours as many employees come now to the office only for few hours 

  • Automatic cancellation of desk reservations in case an employee is sick or on vacation. Smart integration with your HR system would deliver it without any manual involvement. For example, check Yoffix integration with Personio or ask our team about further HRIS integrations.

  • Automatic cancellation of office reservations in case an employee didn’t check in at the office within a defined period. In that case, the desk is again available for spontaneous bookings (read on office check-ins)


5. Ensure disciplined desk sharing

Many traditional desk booking systems fail because employees simply don’t use them. These features can help you:

  • Weekly reminders on reservation for next week. For example, all Yoffix users get a Friday afternoon notification to make a booking for next week, or if bookings are done already, a summary of done bookings.

  • Check-ins in the office the day of booking. Yoffix offers check-ins both via Slack and MS Teams to make it easy and convenient.  

  • Customized messages to employees that fail to use the desk booking system or don’t book sufficient number of office days. 

  • Hardware elements like Yoffix SpaceScreen at office reception or room displays for meeting rooms create additional visibility of hybrid office set-up and booking status of desks and rooms. That reminds employees to make their bookings in advance and helps to avoid conflicts over reserved desks. 


6. Keep desk sharing simple & easy to use

Remember, your colleagues will use the selected Desk Booking system nearly every day. So it is crucial to offer intuitive, simple UX that they will like to use. 

  • The most convenient is to offer desk booking directly in communication platforms that your company already uses – here are desk booking options for MS Teams or Slack

  • Modern UX implies booking a desk (or other resources) in just 1-2 clicks. Ideally, you can also select a multi-day or repeatable booking option to minimize the number of bookings your employees have to do

  • It is surely helpful if your desk booking system learns from your previous bookings to automatically offer your colleagues their favorite seat

  • Easy onboarding with SSO is a must. 


7. Monitor & adjust your hybrid office set-up

A hybrid office with Shared Desks is a new project for any company and will require finetuning and adjustment. 

That’s why it is crucial to have full transparency on your hybrid set-up from several perspectives:

  • Statistics on office utilization – Office utilization on specific days but also dynamics across longer periods.

  • Statistics on employees' preferences – it is important to understand not only some average utilization KPIs but also to learn what share of your employees are using the office and how often.

  • Statistics on office attendance – Data on the team level about the average number of days in the office or when the team met in the office last time. That will help your office manager or HR to set priorities on office days and will enable your team leaders to manage the office attendance of their team members.

Heat maps are a great tool to visualize your real office use and to make decisions about desk allocation (e.g. if you see that utilization of personalized desks is very low you might want to make them flex desks) and further development of your office space. With that, you can see which zones of the office are on demand or which desks can be eliminated.


Read more about further helpful data insights for your hybrid office here. We hope these tips will help you to manage your hybrid office most effectively and productively. 


Empower hybrid work

Select desk-sharing software that will help you to implement these tips and automate all underlying processes. That would enable you to reach these three major goals for any hybrid organization:

  • Optimize your office space by 50-75% depending on defined hybrid rules

  • Ensure a more vivid corporate culture and productive office set-up through more meetings on-site

  • Make your employees happier, engaged, and loyal. 

Last but not least, following these tips you can automate a lot of manual work of your HR and office management. 

TechTimes has named Yoffix as #1 Software for Hybrid Office Management und StartUsInsights – 5 Top Solutions for Remote Worker Management Why? Because we help any organization to implement the most powerful and intuitive system for the management of hybrid offices and teams. 


You want to check how your hybrid office can be best managed or how you can upgrade your current desk booking tool - then talk to Yoffix customer success team.